Orcs MUST* Die!

► WTF Is... - Orcs must Die ?

*Well…not really but it nets you a bonus skull

Cute little game we have here….especially the spring traps, which are hilarious. I have to agree with the criticisms of the weapons though; they lack desperately needed visual oomph. Considering the sheer number of traps that can be unlocked, perhaps things will improve in later levels but I won’t be too optimistic, given the very dreary set designs. Tower defence games (and all their variants) tend to live or die by a combination of comedy value, gimmicky flash and consistent rulesets with distinct deployable weaponry. The humour seems to be of the douchebaggery variant, and the middle is suspect, so this game really needs the third factor to deliver in spades to keep attention spans.

Come to think of it, I think games of this genre tend to suffer a lot of they drop down to a third person perspective camera view instead of an isometric or top down approach. One might tolerate and even indulge in a lot of crude animation if you have a god’s eye figuratively speaking. Once it’s all close and personal, the stakes for whizzes and bangs tend to be upped substantially. If you take away the tea-sipping abstract pleasure of seeing little lemmings go poof, you need more visceral stuff to plug the gap. In a matter of speaking.

Remakes, remakes everywhere

Gamescom Coverage : Hyper WTF is Carrier Command?

This looks intriguing enough. On the superficial side the atmospheric particle effects and the radar screen looks well implemented. Gameplay-wise if it replicates the original game with a few sensible additions I’ll be satisfied. I’m not exactly expecting Supreme Commander, just something that looks reasonably polished and is good for a nostalgia trip. Everything else is a bonus.

At least he’s not kung fu fightin’

Gamescom Coverage : WTF is Tera Online?

Normally MMORPGes don’t interest me in the slightest, but this caught my eye, if only for the simply superb Haters Gonna Hate strut that beardogbeaver thing has going for it. It also seems to take a more dynamic, arcade-ish approach to combat, which can only be a good thing in a dreary crowd of WoW clones. While the art assets, animation and texture work are technically great, the art direction for the human characters seem straight out of the NCSoft playbook, even though this isn’t a NCS product. The genre really needs to take bigger design risks now that player numbers are reaching saturation levels, and I don’t mean pauldrons.

MUZZLE FLASH OF POWAH

WTF Is... - Shadow Harvest?

Normally I would never watch a gameplay vid of a shovelware FPS, but this is just comedy gold. You don’t even need to watch the whole damn thing, just get to the point where you see the gun muzzle bloom effects and bullet time in their full glory. I wonder what their feature design document was like.

P.S:TotalBiscuit is totally awesome. Continue reviewing the indie stuff, especially stuff like this.